


and spin him to the ground

by alaynes



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Sex, But also, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Fuck Or Die, M/M, No beta we die like immortals, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Pre-Canon, See what I did there, Self-Harm, Sex Pollen, Temporary Character Death, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, but when they do it its as consensual as it can be, kind of??? if the porn is the plot???, mainly because of the sex pollen and fuck or die scenario, scorpio season hijinx, the author tried, to avoid the sex pollen but i figured its better to tag it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:00:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27388345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alaynes/pseuds/alaynes
Summary: Yusuf turned around—and immediately realised his mistake. They were both standing, eyes open, and if for one moment they were wide in shock and horror, the next they were blown great with lust. Looking at Nicolò was as looking at a distant mirage; every inch of his skin, covered and not, burned as steel under a hot summer sun, and the only thing that would cool him would be to dip into Nicolò’s waters, to drink him dry, to steal his lost breath from his mouth.-Yusuf and Nicolò's tentative truce is put at risk when they end up trapped in a cave together.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 26
Kudos: 199





	and spin him to the ground

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I got carried away with a fic bunny and speedwrote this? I did like, literally 0 research for this and I am happy for it to stay that way. Maybe everything is sexier when it's 'to the point of death', and repeat ad nauseam? Also a good spot to be unreasonably poetic about like, wild lust and Kaysanova. 
> 
> Also: this whole fic and everything in it IS unquestionably dubious in nature, because it's a bad situation. However they do their best to make it out of a situation in as painless a manner as possible, and there's definitely no consent issues of one character over another. Please read all the tags first, message me if yall have any questions, and stay safe while reading!
> 
> Title from Devil's Spoke by Laura Marling!

They were ambushed mere minutes after they set foot in the cave.

The two men were somehow there behind them in minutes, though when they were outside there had been no one in the vicinity. They seemed ordinary enough at first sight, but on looking again there was something odd about them, something that made it difficult to look at them for too long, as though seeing them through thick fog, or at a great distance. They also did not attack either Yusuf nor Nicolò, which in hindsight should also have been more suspect—most of those they met on their travels, at least those that carried weaponry on their belts or backs, tended to take issue with one of the two of them. More in recent years, as pilgrimages and caravans had become unsafe. Any place of shelter was precious, and this was a good cave, hidden away from the road, with a little underground stream within where the river passed by.

The both of them had said something to each other in a tongue he did not recognise, which was odd, for these parts. And then, laughing, even as Yusuf and Nicolò rose to their feet, the men, quick as lightning, were on them. He had his sword out immediately, but Yusuf’s arms felt weighted down, and his feet stumbled, where the men were both fast and precise. The sword that pierced him sent a blaze of warmth through his chest rather than the piercing pain of a sword. Nicolò was the first to go down—perhaps a good thing, as he woke quieter than Yusuf did, and tended to alert instantly—with the piercing of a second, coloured blade, too thin and bright to be a proper sword, through his chest. Yusuf swore as he fell backwards himself. The men laughed.

The world faded into darkness.

* * *

When he awoke, the scent of orange blossoms surrounded him, so thick and heavy that it lay upon him like a blanket, cloyed his throat until he couldn’t breathe.

* * *

When he awoke, the little light was gone from the cave that had been there earlier, and so were the men.  _ Odd _ . Had they not killed the both of them to have the cave to themselves? Yusuf had assumed that he would awaken outside, perhaps robbed of everything but what he wore, but—he checked his body quickly, and found that nothing had been touched, not even the melons he had in his bag. He groaned and began to sit up, chest rumbling violently even as the sword wounds had healed and faded to oblivion. He clutched at it, rubbing, until whatever leftover pain there was vanished. Greater injuries took longer to heal; these injuries did not 

Another groan sounded, one nearly as familiar as the sound of his own body’s creaks and groans. Perhaps more familiar than Yusuf would like. “I thought for a moment the men had carted you away.”

Nicolò made a noise more struggle than complaint. “Relieved?”

Yusuf laughed. “Disappointed that I would have to rescue you.  _ Again _ .” He groaned as his lungs seemed to expand and contract abruptly, and pulled himself up, one hand on a rock, to ask Nicolò to pass him the carafe of water, when—

a wave of heat hit him, burning hotter than the sun—

his eyes, the colour of lakes of immeasurable depth, bored into him; his mouth opened on a gasp that had gotten caught halfway out, called to him—

were those orange blossoms in the air? Had there not been—

through the thin worn cloth that covered him, flesh peeked, thinly muscled but with a strength Yusuf knew very well—

Yusuf couldn’t say who moved first, but they met in the middle, Nicolò’s unsteady leg catching on a rock, sending him hurtling into Yusuf’s body. For a moment, he only stared, unable to do much else, eyes wide as his tentative partner, this provisory friend and many-times enemy, stood in his arms. And then it came: the urge to kiss him, to press every inch of bare skin together, to cover his skin with marks as he had a hundred times before but this time they would be different marks entirely, marks he would be sorry to see disappear—

He jumped away first. 

What was he doing? This was his... friend was too strong a word. This was his companion, or the demon sent to torture him, or the one whose death would finally bring his own, the one who he was meant to defeat or be defeated by—the one staring at him as though he was the last oasis in the desert, the one steadily reaching for him; Yusuf’s hand settled around the small of his back, and Nicolò gasped, jolting forwards as though burned, placing two hands on Yusuf’s chest like they were meant to belong, and Yusuf understood when he made a small plaintive noise of want, every point of contact burning even through the cloth that separated them, and—

This time, Nicolò leapt away, staring at his hands in shock as though they had moved of their own volition. Yusuf pulled his own hands to himself. “What—what have you done to me now?” he choked out. His skin burned still with what terrifying want, and he had hardened to the point of pain. “What  _ is _ this?” Nicolò reached forward, and then seemed to catch himself, and stumbled backwards. Yusuf took the moment to take a step back himself, then another, just catching himself for reaching to help when Nicolò fell. 

Nicolò reached into the dirt and picked up his sword, still staring at Yusuf. Betrayal clawed with lust, but won. He removed his own sword, still on his back, from its sheath, and raised it before him. His hands curled around the hilt aching to take hold of his opponent instead. 

They rose as one. Nicolò was lithe, quick, the tension in his body belying his grace as he stood, arms flexing around his sword. Yusuf almost dropped his own, but—no, no. What was he thinking? What was this, this—watching him was near painful, but he must, for he was holding a sword against him when they were meant to be  _ past _ that, and equally because he was too beautiful to look away from, a being of strength and beauty and violence that Yusuf wanted to fight nearly as much as he wanted to fuck— _ no! _

He had seduced him somehow, cast a spell, some trickery—though that did not explain why he was staring at Yusuf as well, eyes almost hazed over. He was just as hard as Yusuf.

He lunged, sword upraised, to cast a killing blow, to hope that that would end this trickery, whatever this was—sword lowered, he would grasp him by the arms, kiss him, debauch him thoroughly— _ Yusuf what has taken over you, he has betrayed you _ —

His sword slowed, met Nicolò’s body with a friction that left his bones crackling, its point not strong enough to cut through flesh with any pace, certainly not with his own lackluster strength, and Yusuf’s mouth fell open as he was impaled as well, blade slicing his gut, blood spraying his lover’s face and neck, near obscene—

* * *

When he awoke, he was in a pool of his own blood. This he realised as the hand he pressed to his aching head landed wet. An unhappy death, then. For one moment, he thought of Nicolò; had they killed him as well, whoever  _ they _ were? 

And then he remembered, abruptly, the circumstances of his death.

What had that been? He had never, not even as an adolescent first discovering the pleasures of the flesh, been so overcome with lust as he had then, minutes earlier. And for  _ Nicolò _ ? Was it his doing? Such magics were the realm of jinn and demons; his f—his r—Nicolò may be cursed with the same inexplicable immortality that Yusuf was, but he was not  _ truly _ a demon. He could not be. Even knowing all that Yusuf did of the powers of such beings, he did not think that Nicolò could have convinced him of his humanity over these many years they had known each other,  _ certainly _ not these last months of tentative friendship, were he not truly a man as Yusuf was. And  _ Yusuf _ certainly did not have any powers of seduction, nor any other magic, barring his inability to die.

“What devilry is this?” a curse sounded. Yusuf opened his eyes, and there Nicolò lay, awash in red, chest heaving. His hands were claws around a blade, and Yusuf recognised it for his own. It must have been closer. The sight sent a great shiver through him, the thought of Nicolò’s hands around this extension of his body, possession written in his wrists. Nicolò faltered, ripe mouth open, skin flushed, as his gaze traced over Yusuf’s body. This trail of his eyes alone sent embers burning over his skin, red hot—and then stopped at where his cock, yet again, had swelled with desire, visible through his shirt. There could be nothing more important than replacing that gaze with touch, than touching in return. 

The sword fell from Nicolò’s hands as he reached upward, and landed with a clang. Yusuf snapped his eyes up. Nicolò reached for him, flat on his back, temptation itself made human. 

He roared, and grabbed for the sword on the ground beside him, which seemed to wake Nicolò as well. 

This battle he knew.

* * *

When he awoke, Nicolò lay atop him. A slow heat spread across him, beginning at his belly, where Nicolò’s hand rested, spreading outward from each fingertip to his arms, his legs, his heart, his cock, his mouth, until all were molten lead, too weak to do anything but stare, to move him. He was unconscious still, which was all that kept Yusuf from taking his hand and reaching downwards, wrapping it around his own length, or perhaps upwards, to lick at his palm and press it around his throat instead, to—

Nicolò stirred. His flesh knit itself together, and Yusuf’s conscious mind rose. 

He should move him. He was not thinking with his mind, his awareness was lost, this sorcery, whatever it was, had taken it. His body burned with a fire he had never known before, and if he did not move Nicolò  _ now _ , he would take him, would fuck him into the dirt, would press his hands and mouth to every inch of his flesh and destroy him for all others, would embed his prints into his skin and blood and bones. His fingers fluttered around Nicolò’s face, brushing the pretty lines of his jaw, as he began to open his eyes. 

Yusuf saw as he went from recognition to desire, even as blood painted his face. He grabbed his enemy by the hair and pulled him back, but the sound that Nicolò made was deep and throaty, and the line of his throat as his head was wrenched back called, skin tight and stretched around the column of his life, and Yusuf followed, mouthing at the stretch of bare skin, gasping at the warmth under his lips, as the ache in his bones finally subsided, as air refilled his lungs. Nicolò’s hands rushed over his back and shoulders as though not knowing where to touch, and his own grip loosened, long hair now sliding over his fingers. 

“Is that orange blossom?” Nicolò panted into his ear.

Yusuf began to answer, but as he pulled away, recognition called, and before he could do something important such as hold his head again or kiss his throat again, Nicolò’s skull collided with his.

* * *

When he awoke, his head was throbbing violently.

He got to his feet before he could make the mistake of seeing the unconcealed lust on Nicolò’s face and lose himself yet again. A great wave of dizziness overtook him, perhaps because he had just been killed, or at the very least knocked unconscious, by having his  _ head bashed in _ . Bastard. He hoped, if nothing else, that Nicolò had been knocked unconscious as well, as he deserved.

It was almost too easy to be angry at Nicolò. Yusuf didn’t know what he had done, how he had achieved this, but he knew precisely what it was—a betrayal. Months they had spent in a state of truce, the urge to battle on sight replaced with words, with food exchanged by a fire, with standing back to back against greater enemies when they met them. Yusuf had—he had been relieved, in some ways. Nicolò was the only man he knew, twenty years after his first death. The only constant, as cities and men fell. To kill him had been a part of that as well, but...

Yusuf had been—was—tired. He had not expected this betrayal, not from the man who gave his share of bread to passing hungry travellers, who was apologetic and unhappy in turns, who fought as honestly as he spoke.  _ Honesty _ . Yusuf, perhaps, was a fool.

He opened his eyes tentatively when the throbbing subsided just enough that he knew it was no headache but inflicted pain. It was no longer quite so dark within the cave, thin dawn light scattered, but not coming visibly from the entrance he had taken earlier. He took a step forward, steadying himself as his leg began to make complaints about having lain tangled on the floor with another for—who knew how long? 

Yusuf frowned. When they had entered the cave, it had been near light outside. He did not, these days, take a long time to wake after his deaths, not as he had the first time he died. It was a matter of minutes, not hours, for his bones to realign and flesh to knit back together, for whatever blood was drawn from him to return to him, and his heart to begin beating once more. Certainly, there were deaths that had been taken longer to return from, or injuries that had taken longer to heal—he did not like to remember often the hour he had spent watching with mounting horror as two of his fingers regrew—but these had not been particularly violent. There had been three, yes, since the men had slain him, but... 

He paused. No, had there not been four?  _ Is that orange blossom? _ The scent of orange blossoms still perfumed the air, though not nearly as strong as it had been the first time. What was this? He looked behind him for any sign of flowers growing in this dark damp place, and landed on—

Nicolò. He knelt on the ground where the two of them had fallen, eyes burning through him. He leaned forward as Yusuf turned, as though being pulled to him by an invisible rope that tethered them together. He felt it as well, the tug towards him, the need to touch his skin, which would be the only relief, the only answer—

“Do you smell flowers?” he asked, his last coherent thought before the heat overtook him once more.

* * *

When he awoke, a short dagger was buried in his ribs, and Nicolò lay beside him, his own sword buried in his prone body still. He pulled the dagger from himself and dropped it beside him, but the pain of a still-healing mortal wound was no worse than the sight of his lover taken from him, by his own hand no less.  _ Wake up, Nicolò _ , his mind sang. He was beautiful even in repose, even with the hilt of Yusuf’s sword buried deep in him. When he awoke, Yusuf would kiss the wound from his body, make whole what he had rend, would take his time to possess and be possessed, would mend his—

Nicolò began to groan, coughing and sputtering as his body attempted to heal around the sword yet embedded in him. Even his hacking cough was appealing, and his groans sounded like moans to Yusuf’s ears. He could hear them now, the sounds he would make when Yusuf pierced him with a different sort of sword, how he would lay on his back and writhe, now in the dirt, later in the water, later yet in sheets, how he would grapple with Yusuf’s cock as he was with the sword buried in him, how the light in his eyes would flare when he saw Yusuf as he was now, how he would reach for him as he was doing now, how—

Yusuf’s eyes fluttered shut. The trickle of relief for his reawakened lover— _ enemy _ — _ traitor _ —was gone; replacing it came a flood of rage that made invisible the betrayal in Nicolò’s own eyes. He clambered atop Nicolò’s body, grasped the handle of the sword still in him, and  _ turned _ .

* * *

When he awoke, they were on the opposite sides of the cavern. This was a good bit of forethought, in Yusuf’s opinion, even if it had been torture when he had grabbed his opponent by the collar, and instead of tugging him close to press lips to bloody lips, had pushed him away with all his strength, until they were too distant to touch as they died.

“Nicolò,” he called out, keeping his eyes shut. Sight was the key, it seemed. It had to be; he was of clear mind until he saw the man, but the moment he did, everything changed. It was as though the Nicolò he knew, killer and sometime-friend and traitor, was replaced by another one that existed only within this cavern. In his mind’s eye, they were one and the same, but this figment stared at him with lips parted with a thirst Yusuf felt himself, whose fingers reached for him to soothe the burn of his skin. This figment killed him as well, but even as their blood flowed, it was too difficult not to see the grace in his postures and the clever curl of his hands around his sword and the girth of his cock. 

The important part was that their lust, too, was shared. He could not think of a spell that Nicolò would curse himself with. Even if it was a misfire—

He had to take the chance. “Nicolò!” he repeated when there was no response. 

This time, a weary groan came, and then, softly, “Yusuf.”

“Do not look at me!” he called out. “Keep your eyes shut, or look anywhere, but do not look at me.”

A pause, before he said, “Yes.” 

With his eyes shut, it was impossible to know what Nicolò was doing, whether he had listened or not. It was entirely possible that he had opened his eyes already. That he was even now rising to his feet to reach Yusuf, either with sword in hand or his cock. Hopefully, he was not about to die a humiliating death with his eyes closed—but if he did, it would simply be one more. Nothing had held so far.

“Did you cause this?” Yusuf asked after several seconds of no sound. “Because if you did, I swear—”

“No!” Nicolò said, first loudly, and then, slower, “no. And it is not your doing either, I gather?” he asked. Yusuf shook his head, before he remembered, and said, 

“No, it is not.”

Of course that had been Nicolò first assumption as well as his own.  _ How quick we are to lay blame at the other’s feet _ . Though it was not strange, he supposed, after twenty years of battle. And Yusuf’s  _ other _ condition, the one that had brought them to this cave, and in fact had preserved their bodies to crave each other this way, was  _ also _ Nicolò’s fault, and vice versa—but he could not see a target to this if the spell affected the both of them. He could not humiliate Yusuf when he was clawing for his back; nor could he kill him permanently; nor could he play at making a slave of lust of him, when the desire in his eyes was as great as the one Yusuf felt. 

“Was it—those men? It is odd, I do not remember now how they appeared.”

That was right. There had been men, two, one old or—perhaps both had been old? Or young? He frowned, but their appearance had slipped from his mind as though water, leaving behind only the scent of orange blossoms. “Neither me. They appeared as though from nowhere, and killed us. I had thought—they wanted the cave for themselves. But they haven’t—” he paused. The light in the cave; surely it could not be? Behind his eyes, the red that hinted of morning gleamed. Somewhere beyond that would be Nicolò; he could not open his eyes. 

Slowly, by feel, he rose to a stand. “What?” Nicolò asked, “But what? Yusuf?”

“Wait,” he called back, and Nicolò quieted immediately, voice giving way to slow breathing that echoed around him. Yusuf felt his way, slowly, to the entrance to the cave, but the light behind his eyes did not grow. He pressed one hand, then another, forward, and forward, and forward again, but met only rock and moss. Forward again, and yet forward, but there was nothing below his palms that indicated an exit. 

He had to be in the wrong place. That was the only explanation. He had felt his way in the wrong direction; he had not seen the cave well enough to know. And yet, as he moved forward, only hard surface met him, and the light did not grow. 

“Yusuf?” he heard, clear behind him. “What are you doing?”

Nicolò had to be behind him; the cave entrance must be ahead. He had to check, to see. Yusuf opened his eyes.

The walls of the cave stood, a sturdy brown-grey and green. Through part of the rock he had felt, a thin trail of light scattered dust motes before Yusuf’s vision, shining into the cave, concentrated into points by the great boulders that blocked the exit. His heart caught in his throat.  _ Trapped _ . He shoved at the smallest of the boulders, but it was strong, held in place by several greater rocks and stones, and his shoving rewarded him only with a flurry of fine dust and pebbles raining on him.

“Yusuf!” Nicolò called again, more insistent this time.

“The cave has been blocked in,” he said, notes of panic creeping into his voice. “We’re trapped.”

“What did you say?” Nicolò asked, voice far closer than it had any right to be. Yusuf turned around—

and immediately realised his mistake. They were both standing, eyes open, and if for one moment they were wide in shock and horror, the next they were blown great with lust. Looking at Nicolò was as looking at a distant mirage; every inch of his skin, covered and not, burned as steel under a hot summer sun, and the only thing that would cool him would be to dip into Nicolò’s waters, to drink him dry, to steal his lost breath from his mouth.

Nicolò realised before he did, and ran backwards until he hit the wall and collapsed onto his knees. On his knees, he was of a height with Yusuf’s cock. When he began to approach, ready to strip him down and wash his wounds and kiss the injuries from his skin, Nicolò raised a hand, and then punctuated it with his sword. “Stay back!” he warned, through a cracking voice.“Sit—sit down. Sit down, and I will sit also.”

Yusuf had not picked up his sword when he had risen to check the entrance to the cave. Were they to grapple, he would surely lose—not that it mattered particularly. He swallowed past the growing lump in his throat. Sitting down was forcing rusted metal into a shape it had never been before. He managed it, even as the ache in his bones grew sharper, more focused, in his knees and nose, which pointed towards Nicolò. He could not tear his eyes away; to close them now would be torture, once he had glimpsed what was before him. Instead, he stared anywhere that would not be appealing. The drying blood on Nicolò’s tunic, where he had killed him; the gleam of his sword, which pointed at him; the tension in his body, which betrayed his strain; the curl of his arms, the points of his lashes, the shifting grip on his sword hilt, as though he was dripping something else entirely. “Does it hurt?” he asked. Nicolò nodded. “Me as well.”

“Do you smell flowers?” he asked. His voice, Yusuf had never noticed before, was crisp but warm, smoke from a cookfire. 

“Orange blossoms.”

Nicolò opened his mouth, but nothing emerged. His eyes gleamed with terminable agony. Yusuf curled his hands around his knees, dug his fingers into the hard points, imagined those imprints in the back of Nicolò’s arms. Nicolò rose, almost falling over himself in his urge to reach him. He fit a knee perfectly in the space between Yusuf’s legs, visibly fighting himself. It didn’t matter; what mattered was that he wanted him, what mattered was the way his breath rattled when Yusuf reached a hand to grab his shoulder, when they pressed against each other. 

And then he said, “What have they done to us?” and Yusuf remembered where he was. His hands curled around Nicolò’s throat, turned from caresses to points. Nicolò licked at his lips even as his eyes shut.

* * *

When he awoke, Nicolò was awake already, and gave a shout that almost had Yusuf springing up. “Do not open your eyes!”

Yusuf kept his head down, pressed between his knees, so that accidentally opening them would not make him look at Nicolò accidentally, as it had these past few times. “It makes us crave each other,” Yusuf said. “I know who you are, but the heat takes control until I cannot think.”

Nicolò gave a hoarse sound of agreement, half a sob. “We cannot remain like this. I refuse to—” he choked, voice catching on some unsaid phrase, though Yusuf could parse what it likely was, and was entirely in agreement. A mere moment later, though, came—“ _ Yusuf _ —” and a wail of a cry.

It was too much. He opened his eyes, to find Nicolò on the other side of the cave, one foot in the torturous process of regrowing, bones exposed. Even as his heart pulled and ached, Yusuf did not envy him that. “Would that I could take that wound into my own body, so you would not have to suffer so, Nicolò,” he said, voice shaking.

Tears had never suited a man so well as they did this one. “I would not wish any of this pain on you, and it is better that you are unhurt, for you can come to me still.” 

That, he supposed, was precisely why Nicolò had injured himself that way. He began to rise, and Nicolò reached for him with one arm with a melancholy call. Yusuf swallowed. The temptation was—but he must—this was not—

“Yusuf!” Nicolò cried out. Yusuf exhaled as the sound washed over him, a fresh and unfamiliar pain, of someone crying out for him this way. His pain was for Nicolò’s, not for his own. He groaned, and shoved a knife into his own leg. By the time he fell onto the ground, Nicolò was in tears, and he as well. 

“Why did you do that?” Yusuf asked, through the haze of tears and longing. “Why would you hurt yourself so? Simply to stay away from me, my heart? Your distance is greater a pain than any blade could bring me, even your own.”

“I wished to see if it would fade,” Nicolò said. He writhed on the ground, half from pain and half from denial of what he wanted, what  _ they _ wanted, and would it not be so easy to stumble to him despite the injury in his own leg, to collapse atop him, surely there was no use for feet in such things as he wanted. But then Nicolò called out again, and Yusuf’s eyes watered, and he stayed down. “But I’m not certain if—”

His words faded out, and his eyes widened, breath coming faster, a panic growing in him. “What happened?” Yusuf called out, and reached for him, but he could not move, could not get to him in time, until—Nicolò’s eyes fluttered shut, and his breathing stopped entirely. 

The tears grew, and grew, and grew, until their salt had burned away what heart he had remaining to him, left an empty hollow in his chest. “Nicolò!” he called, crawling to his knees, reaching forward, but his injury was not yet healed, and the wracking sobs taking over him were too far to move through.  _ Come alive, come alive, return _ . But he would, he must, and Yusuf would be here, waiting, to touch him and be touched, to hold him as he awoke again, to kiss the wound from his body instead of twisting the sword further in. He would awaken, as he always had, and at the end of this great task there would be his touch and his voice and his scent, that swee citrus scent.

The scent climbed past his ribs, taking great claws from his flesh, until it sat in his throat, choking, choking.

* * *

When he awoke, he was blindfolded. 

“How did you die, that time? There was no blood? I did not think your injury so great...” Nicolò trailed off, sounding remarkably calm for someone who must have looked at him to blindfold him.

Yusuf said, “I am not certain, but if I am right... it does not fade.” He paused, swallowing. If this was true—no matter the fact of their immortality, any attempt to escape was about to grow infinitely more difficult. “I smelled the flowers again, and then I died.”

Nicolò seemed to be hesitating. His breath echoed in their enclosed chamber, sound blanketing Yusuf. The voice came from closer this time. “It was the same for me. It was not so different from being poisoned, except that the poison seemed to come from within me.” The frown was near audible in his voice. 

“So we cannot look at nor touch each other,” he said after a moment. “And this poison seems to kill us in less than an hour after we wake.”

This situation only grew worse and worse. “We must make certain, then, that we do not see each other nor touch. The entrance is the only way out, and we are both not without strength. Surely we can clear our way through it between us, as long as we are careful not to touch in that time.”

“You are more optimistic than I.” Nicolò sighed a great sigh, and Yusuf could not help but join. “I do not see the purpose of this. Why they did it.”

“This—poison—makes us crave each other, and kills us if we do not. It seems to me the purpose is clear enough.” Nicolò made a frustrated noise, and Yusuf sighed. He knew what Nicolò had meant, but he did not have an answer any more than his friend did. “Perhaps they assumed we were lovers and played a trick on us. Perhaps they simply wished to give us an... entertaining death.” They could not have known that Yusuf and Nicolò would wake and wake again.

“Lovers,” Nicolò said, latching onto the first. “Where did they get that from, I wonder? Do you want to fuck me, Yusuf?”

Was that not the question of the hour? If he was to be honest, well... he had certainly noticed Nicolò before. They had known each other, battled each other, for twenty years even before this friendship of theirs. There was much to be said for the familiar, and Yusuf was merely a man, and weak. After a time any anger at himself for finding beauty in the line of his body had given way to acceptance, that this enemy too could be attractive. Surely all tempting creatures and demons were meant to be so? Their truce had accentuated this, but had not said anything yet, letting pass unsaid the shadows Nicolò’s nose cast before a fire, or the limber strength in his legs. 

However, he was not interested in being honest. And at this moment, under the effects of this poison? Yusuf grinned—or perhaps bared his teeth. What did it matter, when Nicolò could not look to see? “I would rather die.”

Nicolò began to laugh. Yusuf liked his laugh, the warmth and surprise in it, quiet and muted as it was, completely unlike his own. Yusuf joined, laughing with him, even as the tension in his chest did not ebb away. 

“What about yourself, Nicolò?” he asked once the laughter had faded. 

A pause. Dread tightened in him as the pause elongated, but then: “To me... being parted is death itself.” His voice shook.

Yusuf straightened, but of course, the blindfold would not allow him to see. “What did you say?” The same, it seemed, could not be said for Nicolò at this moment.

A reaching arm grasped at his shoulder, and Yusuf turned, heart hammering, as deft fingers pulled the blindfold from his eyes. Nicolò leaned over him, painted blue by the pale light in the cave, shining as none other in the world ever had or would. He cupped Yusuf’s face in his hands, too gentle. “I said that to be without you is to be without the sun, the moon, and all the stars. To be away from you is as painful a death as any other I have faced. I said that all I need is you, my heart.”

Desire threatened to choke him, kinder than poison but no less deadly. Nicolò seemed to feel the same; his words fell from his mouth in a rush as though chasing each other from his lips. “Nicolò,” he said, and leaned up to be closer to him. Nicolò leaned down.

Their lips touched, and all the rest of the world faded away, until it was only him and Nicolò’s mouth, his scratching beard, his palms at his jaw. His mouth was dry and papery, but it sated a thirst deeper than all the oceans, quenched a fire that burned brighter and hotter than the sun itself. It was everything. And it was not enough. They pushed backwards so that Yusuf was pressed to the wall, so Nicolò’s roving hands could rip at his clothing, so Yusuf could slide a leg between Nicolò’s and hear his gasp into his own mouth. The kiss stole the breath from him even as it finally, finally, let him breathe again. When they pulled away, it was only so that Nicolò could wrench Yusuf’s tunic from his neck, but in doing so, in pulling away, he remembered. 

His body blazed, a fog covered his mind, but through it sat Nicolò’s horrified expression. And then Nicolò said, “Fuck,” and all clear thought left his mind, as he reached up, ready to do just that, to take or be taken as Nicolò wanted, he would give him whatever he wanted to hear once again that sweet obscenity from his lips, to kiss him again, to—

* * *

When he awoke—

* * *

When he awoke, Nicolò was coughing beside him still. They tended to wake faster from killing each other than from the poison. Yusuf wrenched the dagger from his chest and let it clatter to the side, rubbing at the healing skin. His tunic was ruined beyond repair now. He had considered, some time ago, that perhaps it would be wiser for them to leave their clothing off, to preserve it for when they escaped, but... it was madness to be bare before the other. They would be attached, skin to skin, before they reached for their swords.

“That was perhaps more force than necessary,” he complained, but he was the one who had told Nicolò to stab him. 

“We will never make it to the entrance like this,” Nicolò groaned. Yusuf sighed, shook his head.

“We can afford to lose one life to it, can we not? We go there together, in sight of each other, and make certain we die facing away, without touching.” That had to be the only way—to control when they awoke, rather than what they did once they were taken by the poison. It was easier to die and die again, for they were both confident that they would wake, than it was to chance giving in. And they did—die, and die again. The poison had taken them both several times, but not as many times as the lust. 

“Come, then,” Nicolò said, and began to stand.

The skin of a bare arm brushed against his leg, sending shock up his skin. Yusuf jerked where he sat, but kept his head down, even as every nerve in his body flared and told him to open his eyes, to raise his head, to  _ look _ at the angel that touched him. When he spoke again, Nicolò’s voice was deep and craving. “Look at me. Look at— _ Yusuf _ ,” he said, in his smoke-and-ash tone, near begging. The hand on his leg turned from a light touch to an insistent pat, as the man who had apparently been sitting  _ right next to him _ reached for his knees, placed his hands upon the tears in Yusuf’s clothing, curled them around the soft flesh of his calves, tickled the ends of his hair. “ _ Yusuf _ ,” he repeated, breath coming harsh and wild. Another hand landed on his head, possessive.

It was too much. He looked up, grabbing at Nicolò’s hand and pulling him forward and into him, more than he already had been, until he hovered over Yusuf’s knees, face open and wanting. 

“Nicolò,” he said, and his lover slid a hand down his legs, past the coarse hair, until he reached the base of his thighs. Yusuf brought a hand up to push back a strand of hair falling over the oceans of Nicolò’s eyes, and—

Nicolò realised first, this time. The kick with his knees sent Yusuf flying to his back, and Nicolò mounted him, dark with lust and frustration and lust again. The punch that would have caught him in the mouth was softened instead after with the warm press of fingers against his lips. Yusuf swallowed them, and Nicolò stared, beyond stricken. Yusuf slid his hands under Nicolò’s torn tunic, knowing he started a fire wherever he went. “Nicolò, please, please, kiss me, you are—” he began, and then stopped, choked on the desire straining off against his body, on the filling, overpowering want, on the—

His hand, scrabbling in the dirt, met a sword. He raised it.

* * *

When—

* * *

When he awoke, he was keeled over, leaning on the cave wall, and his head throbbed as badly as it had the time Nicolò had bashed it in with his own skull. “Was it the cave or the fumes that took me?” he asked, pressing fingertips to his nose even as the pain trickled away. He wasn’t sure if it was the hours they had been trapped here together that had done it, or whatever curse those men had cast upon them, but with each death and awakening Yusuf grew only more and more aware of Nicolò. Just at the moment, he could tell where he stood relative to him, even without looking; somewhere over his shoulder, his body heat burning through Yusuf’s even as they made no contact.

Nicolò made a noise. “It was me. I saw you, and ah—” he cut off, but Yusuf could picture it, the mania entering Nicolò’s eyes, pushing him to Yusuf where he was clearing the rubble, shoving him head-first into the wall of sheer lack of control. 

Yusuf closed his eyes for a moment. There was not nearly enough space in the cave for the two of them to work together without sight  _ or _ touch. The first several times they had attempted to do this had gone horribly; a bumped shoulder, a brushed hand, the sight of the other’s back. The longer they were awake, the harder it grew, as to turn to fetch food—they had only their melons and some strips of dried meat Nicolò carried—was to risk sight. 

And worse: each time he awoke it seemed as though there were more rocks than there had been before, though he knew, objectively, that that could not be the case. What was worse, the lust grew uncontrollable after several deaths with no sight nor touch exchanged between them, and the most limited of words. It was as though it grew stronger as his body forgot what it was to look at Nicolò, see the sheen of sweat on his brow, the glimpses of skin behind torn clothing, the longing on his features warring with brutish, beautiful strength. It was like seeing through a haze—not, in some ways, different from the fierce rage that had once used to occupy him at the very sight of Nicolò, but taken in a completely different direction. Everything was lost, clear sight, sane thought, leaving only his body and his lover’s.

Not that they were lovers.

He turned back to the cave and began chipping away at the looser stones that blocked the very mouth of the entrance. He could sense Nicolò’s heat emanating somewhere to his left, but the both of them were very pointedly turned away from each other, avoiding brushing skin only by this awareness of the other’s presence. He wasn’t sure if he ought to be thankful or irritated. 

Another rock shifted, moved, and then, for the first time in the days they had found themselves here—light. Yusuf stopped breathing. Freedom was a breath away, and he stuck his fingers through, scraped away at stones. If he made just enough space for his arm, then his torso, he could pull Nicolò out too once he was beyond, and then—

Yusuf stopped.  _ And then _ ?

Nicolò gave a sudden shout, and Yusuf jumped, turned. “What is it?”

“Part of a boulder collapsed on my hand.” His breath was shaky as he stared at his hand, flexing it once. “I have never had my fingers crushed before.”

Yusuf gave a groan of sympathy and reached for him, taking his already-healed hand before he could recoil. As Nicolò turned to him, Yusuf could almost see the poison take over, in the darkening of his eyes, the parting of his lips. Behind him, the light he had made winked out, but surely it did not matter. Yusuf pressed a kiss to his palm, savouring the scent of it, stronger than the flowers that surrounded them, then another to his fingers, one after the other. Nicolò crowded him in against the wall, until scant inches separated them, and ran fingers down his cheek and jaw. He leaned in, closer, closer, until Yusuf could taste his breath. He had drank of nectar before, the last time they kissed, but simply one taste could never be enough. 

“Nicolò,” Yusuf gasped, as though breathing for the first time, “please.” 

Nicolò came to him, overwhelmed his surroundings, hands on his chest and face gripping at his clothing as though he would disappear within it. Noses clashed, teeth bit into lips. Yusuf arched his back into Nicolò’s body so they were pressed together, but even then it wasn’t  _ nearly _ enough, not nearly what he needed, so he wrenched his uncooperative hand from Nicolò’s hair and pressed it to his ass. 

It happened within moments. Nicolò bucked into him at the touch, shoving him into the wall. Behind them, the loosely perched rocks and stones shifted. Yusuf barely noticed, as Nicolò took the moment to moan into his mouth—but he did notice when the boulder pushed down upon them, sending them to the floor. His ears rang as a great roar and crash sounded. Dust rained down upon the two of them, along with pebbles and other smaller broken stones. When the barrage stopped, he looked up, banging his head into Nicolò’s protective palm.

The hand was wet, sticky—or was that his head? 

“Yusuf—”

* * *

When he awoke, the bones of his back still ached, but he had rolled off Nicolò, and when he opened his eyes tentatively all that he saw was the cave wall. At this point, Yusuf was glad to take these small victories as they came. 

He stood slowly, carefully shielding his range of vision with his hands. 

The trouble with small victories was that they came at the cost of great losses. Whatever progress Yusuf had thought they were making on the cave wall was gone; fresh rocks hindered their exit, and the rain of dust from earlier had left him feeling  _ even _ filthier than before. He had seen it then too, the little light he had allowed in disappearing, but it had been far less important than the sight of Nicolò, than kissing his hurts better. 

Yusuf closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. 

There was nothing for it; they would simply have to do it again. But not right  _ now _ ; now, he was certain, he would begin another rockslide that would leave them buried here for good. He turned around and marched away from the cave wall, and sat down near their supplies, fishing out a fruit for himself and cracking it open on a rock, the one thing this forsaken cave was useful for.

“Yusuf?” Nicolò asked, apparently awake.

“I’m here. Don’t look. There seems to have been a rockslide.”  _ Why had he turned _ ? He had created a gap, if he could simply have kept going, he might have... but to think on those lines was madness. Perhaps he had caused the rockslide then, and not their clumsy careless kissing. Perhaps his foolishness, his momentary pause, his realisation, was what had trapped them.

Shuffling sounds came from the other side of the cave as Nicolò likely stood to examine the wall himself. “Fuck,” he swore. Yusuf was in agreement. 

“Take what rest you can. I am going to clean myself.” He had splashed some water on himself some deaths earlier, wiping at his face and arms, scrubbing the blood wherever he felt it. It felt odd, to go so long without cleaning himself—but here, there was no telling the time beyond the barely-changing light, and he did not particularly want to risk being overtaken by desire while he prayed, and so both that and his ablutions had remained to the side. But now, with dust buried in his hair and dried blood coating his neck and back, he did not want to wait.

Nicolò said, after a few minutes, “Is that wise?”

Yusuf shrugged, slipping one foot into the water to check its temperature. It was cool, as the inside of the cave was, but not so much as to be uncomfortable. “It will certainly help me regain what wisdom I have left.” 

Nicolò marched into his field of view.

Yusuf’s glare transformed midway into a look full of hope. He rose off his feet and walked to him, pausing to catch a breath as Nicolò struggled out of his tunic. Below was fresh skin, much of it filthy, but some clean. Yusuf’s hands shook at his sides. 

He did not know who reached first. “What are you doing?” His mouth had dried, and he was hardening again. Not that he had spent much time since their arrival here  _ not _ hard—and who could, when the man before him was as a work of art, the source of all pleasure and beauty in the world? 

“My tunic keeps tearing. I do not have others, and want something to wear when we—leave.”

Nicolò’s skin was soft, if covered in a layer of fine dust, much as Yusuf was, but he was far too hurried to savour it for now. That structure he had oft noticed but long ignored was before him finally, and he would lay claim to all of it all at once. “Why would you wish to wear anything? All the world should see you in all your glory. You ought to be commemorated, Nicolò, I will do it myself after— _ come here _ .”

Nicolò did not  _ come here _ , because he was removing his drawers. 

Yusuf fell to his knees, ripping off his tunic so fast it nearly tore. Nicolò hovered over him, gaze dark, controlled for just a moment—before he moved, so fast it was almost impossible to see. He pulled Yusuf, up to his mouth, even as he himself had a different target. But it was impossible not to go where Nicolò called, and he followed him up, collapsing into his body with a bruising kiss. NIcolò wrangled with his loose trousers, throwing them off to the side, and Yusuf bucked into his body so they were pressed together.

They walked backwards into the water, still kissing, the cool liquid doing nothing to ease the burn across his skin. It only seemed to heighten the tension of their touch, so when Yusuf slid his legs between Nicolò’s and ground his hip into him, the water, nearly at their hips, alternately cooled and burned. They had to break the kiss eventually, and Nicolò used his deadly grip on the back of Yusuf’s head to tug it backwards, stare into his eyes. His own were glinting, darkened apart from two little rings on the outside. 

“Nicolò,” Yusuf said, when he didn’t say anything, only stared. 

Nicolò dropped to his knees, pressing his nose to Yusuf’s belly and inhaling, while his hands buried themselves in his hair. He left kisses like burns on Yusuf’s belly, where he had killed him once, on the first day they met.

His grip in Nicolò’s hair tightened. When he looked up to stare at him with his eyes like lust-darkened wells, Yusuf muttered an apology and buried his face in the water.

* * *

When he awoke, he was floating, and his skin had turned wrinkly with water. He sighed, rubbing a wet hand over his face. He had never had a chance to clean himself, not after Nicolò had appeared before him. “It’s a shame we cannot think of anything beyond our carnal desires when the poison takes us. You could have helped scrub my back,” Yusuf said.

Nicolò made a noise. “It was my mistake. I did not think I was facing the right direction, and opened my eyes.”

Yusuf shook his head. “No, the mistake is mine. Had I not turned when we were at the mouth of the cave, before the rockslide, we may have been out of here already.” Nicolò began to protest, but Yusuf cut him off before he could protest. “If I am not to blame then neither are you.” Nicolò said nothing, and Yusuf could imagine him, stubbornness written all over him. He sighed, wiping at his face and neck. “Have you thought about what happens once we escape?”

Nicolò said, “What do you mean?”

“I  _ mean _ , that if this curse does not lift, then it is possible we will never be able to look at each other again.” They had not been travelling together for long, only a few months, but the foundation for it had been laid perhaps three years prior. 

It had been midwinter, when all the rations that Yusuf had gathered for himself had slowly dwindled down, until he was walking through the mountains with barely enough energy to sustain, let alone to fight anyone. Nicolò’s condition, when Yusuf found him being attacked by the mountain raiders robbing all passing civilians, had not been much better. They had fought together, and if Yusuf told himself he fought those raiders because they had killed  _ him _ first, then that was why he had done it. When the raiders were dead, they had huddled around Nicolò’s fire, which had been only because Yusuf was too cold and starved to go anywhere. At one point in the night, Nicolò had glared violently as he passed Yusuf some of his own dried meat and fruit, and said something about Yusuf’s dying repeatedly by starvation not helping anyone. 

In the morning, the both of them had ridden in opposite directions on their attackers’ horses, and they had never spoken about it since, and they had continued to battle when they met. That was who they were, what they did. Except—it was difficult to fight someone with the same anger and conviction when you knew they were not— _ always _ —as you knew them. It had happened again the next year, and then the year after that, an unspoken truce taking hold of them in situations when the elements or the outside world was their enemy as much as the other—a greater enemy, in truth.

This winter, Yusuf had told Nicolò that he would rather not fight, and they had travelled together since. 

There was a long pause, and when he spoke at the end of it, Nicolò sounded hesitant. “I do not wish to have to kill you every hour.” 

“You sound very confident that you will be the one doing the killing.”

Nicolò snorted. “I would not like to die every hour, either.”

“We would have to part ways,” he said, voicing the thing that had occupied an unhappy space in his chest since he had realised it. Some months of companionship, three years of slowly loosening anger—and twenty years of a presence he had  _ known _ he would find, no matter how many times he died and returned. At one time, Yusuf had believed that killing him was the only path to freedom—in some ways, he still believed that, even if he no longer wanted to achieve it. He did not know what would become of him if even the sole other sufferer of his curse was lost to him, for he had been a constant  _ even _ as an enemy. But this...

Nicolò said, “I think we should just do it.”

It took him several seconds. “ _ What _ ?”

Nicolò sounded a little more hesitant this time, but spoke up all the same: “It is near impossible to work together with this constant threat, not to mention the poison. But they seem to be leading us to each other, and it is... easier, I believe, if we are closer.”

That much was definitely true, but—“That is not my question, Nicolò. You cut off _ half your foot t _ o avoid reaching me!”

A loud splash sounded. “That was to see if it would fade!  _ You  _ said you would rather die than fuck me!”

“ _ That was a jest! _ We both laughed, did we not?” Nicolò huffed, and Yusuf shook his head, pressing his eyes shut. “But why? What makes you say so now?” He knew that Nicolò could not be too distant from his own thoughts on the thoughts of eternity alone. Even the women they both dreamt of, who seemed afflicted with what they had, were distant figures, occupying a world unknown to him, so removed that he wondered at moments if they were even real. 

Nicolò took a few moments to reply. “I am tired of killing you. It feels a betrayal. And—there is the matter of supplies. We have food now, and water, but what of when we run out? We cannot keep digging forever if we die and reawaken every hour, if we cannot see each other nor touch. As well as what you said. We cannot live as men do, nor can we die. We have only each other. If the men who cursed us in such a way knew of this by some magical method, they have been exceedingly cruel, but I will not allow their curse to take that from us.” He paused, then said, “That is—this is merely a suggestion. You do not have to agree with me. If you do not want to, we will find out way out, as we were, and after...” he broke off.

“No, no, that isn’t—” He rubbed a hand over his face, his beard, letting a shudder go through him. It was not that he did not want to, more that he did not want to  _ give in _ . And perhaps—the image of Nicolò’s cock hovered behind his eyelids, impossible to forget since the moment he had first seen it—perhaps also that he did not want to fuck Nicolò like this, in this situation. He thought of the first time he had truly  _ noticed  _ Nicolò, a decade and a half prior; just the span of his shoulders, open where he had torn through his tunic. “I want to.” He exhaled, low and slow. “I would rather this did not feel so much a  _ defeat _ . I do not like to give in, and to love should be a beautiful thing.”

Nicolò said, slowly, “Perhaps it does not have to be a defeat. We are doing this ourselves, to escape, not giving in to the madness it takes over us.”

Yusuf hummed. “There is that. This is our choice.” A choice made for their future rather than their life, as it may have been for any other placed in such a situation—not that, could Yusuf find those two men again, anyone else would be. Quirking a lip, he asked, “Do you want to fuck me, Nicolò? Have you thought about it?” 

Nicolò said, sounding strangled, “Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, which was a little more obscene than if he  _ had _ . 

He took a deep breath to clear his mind of all the images that raised, and asked, “How do we do this?”

* * *

When he awoke, the thickness of the poison flowers remained buried in his throat. He would never be able to look at orange blossoms again. He swallowed past it. “Nicolò?” he asked. 

“You’re awake,” he said, sounding as apprehensive as Yusuf felt. “You have not changed your mind?”

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

He stood, rubbing the back of his neck, and then turned.

The heat generated in Yusuf’s flesh could combat the height of winter on its own, melt snow, crack ice. Nicolò was no muscled specimen from the Roman artworks Yusuf had seen; he was better, from the top of his head to the patches of his legs, where Yusuf’s vision ended and the water began. And his cock—

As ever, they met in the middle, Nicolò pulling Yusuf pulling Nicolò into a searing kiss. Harsh teeth cut at his cracking lips, but he did not care, pulling Nicolò closer and closer still by the shoulders, by the elbows, by the arms, the back, unsure where to touch when he had this whole new expanse of untouched, unexplored, unseen skin. His own skin burned, and he could not say if it was cool relief or hot passion that burned where their bodies met. Nicolò’s hands were at his waist, at his ribs, at his ass, digging valleys into him. 

Yusuf reached between their bodies and took both of their cocks in hand, ignoring the hot gasp into his shoulder. Nicolò was hot and weighty in his palm, against him, the pleasure of skin meeting skin in such a way greater than any Yusuf had experienced. Though they had none, in his palm their cocks seemed slick with oil. “Is that orange blossom?” he asked, a murmur into Nicolò’s jaw. Nicolò made a noise that said  _ not now _ , laving kisses against his neck and shoulder. Yusuf let his head fall back, let Nicolò grind into his palm and keen against his neck as he pulled their cocks together, slower than he would prefer, but he wanted this to last, wanted the pleasure to extend through the end of time, wanted nothing more than to hold onto Nicolò this way for centuries more. 

Nicolò brought one hand to hold his, intertwining their fingers together, speeding him up, but Yusuf was uninterested in rush. He swallowed Nicolò’s complaint whole in his mouth; he tasted of burning. “I need you, Yusuf. Come for me, please, come, let me see you,” Nicolò whispered around his gasping desperate mouth. His voice must be an aphrodisiac of its own, no less than any love potion from stories. There was no saying no to that voice. Yusuf tightened his grip, speeding them up, but Nicolò, Priapine tempter and contrarian, now slowed them down.

“You’re killing me, Nicolò,  _ please _ ,” he said, and pressed lips into Nicolò’s shoulder. Nicolò, caring angel made for him, rubbed his thumb over their heads, sent Yusuf careening into the dark. They spilled onto their hands. Nicolò dragged his hand to his mouth and licked it clean. 

Yusuf had never thought he would die of lust.

He was still hard. “Fuck me,” he said.

Nicolò pulled him in for an open-mouthed kiss. He tasted now of the two of them, and Yusuf bit at his lip, pressing a hand to the back of his neck to bring him as close as was humanly possible to be. In an ideal world he could disappear into him entirely. Nicolò responded by grabbing his leg and raising it, rubbing oil-slick hands over his thighs and ass, teasing at his hole. “I think you’re right,” Nicolò said. Yusuf shook his head—surely that was not important now—and walked them backwards, to the edge of the water. When he slid onto his back, Nicolò broke away from his kiss, staring down at him, breath heavy, mouth slick and swollen from kissing, finger marks fading on his shoulders. 

“Yusuf,” he said, voice shaking. “You are the most beautiful man I have seen in my life.”

Yusuf reached upwards yet again, and Nicolò leaned down, but instead of kissing him, he began leaving kisses down his chest and shoulders. Yusuf let his eyes fall shut as he fingered at his hole, sliding one finger inside as though a knife sliding through cream. Through the heat filling him, Yusuf gasped, clutched at Nicolò’s hair. Another finger followed, now with movement, slow and deep as possible. “You set me aflame, my heart,” he hissed, as yet another finger was introduced, the wet slide of them burning and quenching at the same time. “But I will cry if you do not fill me  _ now _ .”

Nicolò broke away from leaving wet kisses on his stomach to stare at him. “Are you ready?” he asked. Yusuf had been ready for days now.

“ _ Yes _ ,” he huffed, then was left clenching around nothing as Nicolò removed his fingers.

Nicolò entered him slowly. Yusuf watched, too taken with the beautiful lines of Nicolò’s neck, the angle of his shoulders, the tension in his arms as he struggled to control himself. It was possible that this was greater a gift than his cock, but—he licked his lips, glutting on the desire that filled him, rose from deep in his chest and threatened to overflow. “Are you—alright?” Nicolò asked.

Yusuf pulled him down by the neck, and leaned up as best he could, filled as he was, and kissed him. “Yes,” he said, between thirsty kisses. “Yes, yes, yes.”

Finally, finally, Nicolò began to move. He did not have much rhythm—like as not he was as overwhelmed as Yusuf was, as out of control, as lost in the presence of him. Satisfaction bloomed in his smile as he clenched and Nicolò’s kisses turned messier, and then was met with sharp pleasure when Nicolò wrapped fingers around his cock.

“Come on, Nicolò,” Yusuf said, panting now. “Come with me, let us come together, fill me, let me feel you,  _ come on _ —”

He cut off as Nicolò’s pace was destroyed entirely, whole body stiffening and twitching under his palms, fingernails digging into his ribs. “ _ Yusuf _ ,” he groaned, and that was what brought him over, spilling onto Nicolò’s chest and his own, clutching at him as wave after wave of pleasure flowed through him.

His eyes closed.

* * *

When he awoke, he found his lungs expanding as though a weight had been placed upon them earlier, and it had been lifted away.

Nicolò lay beside him, naked and lightly flushed, still out. Yusuf braced himself, but—nothing. Nothing. He grinned, inhaling and exhaling deeply at the fresh, clear air of freedom. It had been difficult to notice, but—orange blossoms had perfumed the air of the cave before, slight enough to begin with, but growing greater and greater as they came closer. Now, it was gone entirely. 

Yusuf had a feeling he was going to be very unhappy with those flowers for a while yet.

He shoved Nicolò’s shoulder, then slid into the water. 

“Yusuf?” came the call minutes later. Yusuf rose out of the water, rubbing his hands over his face and hair. Nicolò hesitated, eyes flashing over him once, before relief visibly flooded his features. “It is gone!”

“It is! Come, let us clean ourselves off, and hurry. I would rather like to be out of this terrible place.”

Nicolò nodded, and sank to his knees in the water himself, emerging dripping and wet, and attractive still, but not so much that he could not think straight. They cleaned themselves off in relative silence, but the relief buoying him upwards was so strong he was certain Nicolò could feel it too, issuing from him. 

They took a melon each for themselves and broke their fast together by the rock while their tunics and underclothes, washed as best possible, were laid out to dry. “How long do you think it will take to dig our way out?” he asked, once he was through. “A day, perhaps two?”

Nicolò shrugged. “I think we may be faster if we can work on one part of the wall together. The rocks were braced against each other more than anything else, and they were not packed too well. Lots of dust.”

Yusuf nodded, and once Nicolò was done eating his fill, they went together to see their task.

The entrance to the cave stood open, empty as though there had never been anything before it. They stopped, exchanged glances. It was impossible, for they had spent what felt like days trapped within, struggling to free even a foot of space to leave by, and here—

Nicolò walked up to the exit, and then, slowly, staring at Yusuf, stepped outside. The light of the moon shone down on him, turning his hair silvery.

Yusuf could not help it; he began to laugh.

* * *

Bonus:

“Somewhere by  _ that _ bend...” Joe was saying, looking around. Nicky shook his head, pointing past a small hill covered in bright green trees and strewn in white flowers. “Okay, or that one.”

Andy made an irritated noise. “You’re not going to find your magic cave, Joe,” she said irritably. “You’ve looked a hundred times, and there’s never anything here.”

Nicky patted Joe on the back and turned to Andy. “You are the one who says it really happened, boss. We were ready to pass it off as drugs.”

Andy huffed. “ _ Three days _ . I dreamt about you assholes for  _ three days straight _ .” 

Joe laughed and shook his head, disappearing between a small copse to reappear, seconds later, shaking his head. Orange blossoms from the trees above littered his hair, and Nicky wrinkled his nose at the flower, making Joe laugh and tuck it behind Nicky’s ear.

“Um, what cave?” Nile asked. Joe, Nicky, and Andy had a thousand stories each for a thousand years spent together, and Nile didn’t know any of them. They never minded sharing, but sometimes you had to ask for them to remember. “What are you looking for?”

“A magic cave,” Nicky said.

“ _ What _ ,” Nile asked. Nile stared. This had to be like the time he’d tried to tell her Joe and he had invented garlic bread. 

“Of sex,” Joe added. “Two genies trapped us there, and we had to have sex, or we’d die.” He shot Nicky a wink, to which Nicky responded by squeezing his ass and returning to his hunt for his mysterious disappearing cave. 

Nicky said, “Don’t tell her how we escaped.”

Nile shook her head, following them into the trees, trying not to redden as Andy winked at her and Joe began to croon  _ the power of love _ . Some stories, it was possible, she didn’t  _ need _ to know. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading if you got this far! I really hope yall enjoyed it!! I would really really really appreciate a comment or kudos! 
> 
> My tumblr is @briennetarhs if anyone wants to come shout!


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